Your say / Housing crisis
‘The cost of renting crisis isn’t going away unless we take decisive action’
Saturday marks Bristol’s cost of rent day – the date in the year where an average renter’s salary meets their annual rent.
Put another way, until today, every penny the average renter in our city has earnt so far this year has gone to paying their landlord.
And what’s more, this year we’ve got the dubious honour of being the least affordable city for renters in the entire country. Bristol renters on average send 45 per cent of annual income to their landlord, beating even Londoners who spend on average 43 per cent of their income on rent.
The consequences of this cost of renting crisis are real. Over a quarter of Bristol’s children – and more than half of children in Lawrence Hill – live in poverty after housing costs.
Nationally, nearly a third of renters struggle to afford essentials like groceries due to the cost of rent.
Soaring rents are one of the major causes of homelessness in Bristol, with temporary accommodation numbers up 90 per cent since the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is also driving displacement from communities as more and more people cannot afford to stay in such an expensive city.
The more money we send to our landlord, the less money we have to enjoy the vibrant city we live in, causing a crisis for our small businesses, events and venues as people are struggling to make ends meet.
Some tenants have found their rent pushed up even while repairs are left undone – photo: Eleanor Bate
This crisis does not just affect renters. It also impacts our local council, which is spending tens of millions providing years’ worth of temporary accommodation for people who simply cannot afford to privately rent.
It also impacts the taxpayer as public money is used to subsidise high rents to keep people in their homes. Since April 2023, the government and Bristol City Council have spent £2,476,970 helping with private
rents in Bristol.
But it’s not bad news for everyone. Bristol’s landlords are managing just fine.
Over the next four years, the average renting household in this city will pay more than £90,000 into their landlord’s bank account. Letting agent and property websites highlight rental yields of 8 per cent a year and boast that landlords can expect “reliable rental income” with “consistently high demand from professionals, families and students”.
And while landlords are raking it in, everyone else pays the price. We have heard from a renter who had their rent increased three times in a year whilst their landlord was refusing to do repairs as they said they couldn’t afford to.
One renter who spoke to our campaign reported having their rent increased while they had a rat infestation in their bedroom which their landlord was refusing to deal with.
We have to face up to the fact that this crisis isn’t going away any time soon unless decisive action is taken.
Even if we manage to meet ambitious targets for housebuilding there’s increasing evidence that it won’t make rents any cheaper.
After all, developers are unlikely to build to drive rental costs down and rents have soared in places like Manchester and Croydon despite the construction of significant amounts of new rented housing.
And while we do need to see much more social housing, waiting lists for social homes already dwarf the numbers of new homes that will be built in the future. Also, building new social homes, whilst a vital part of the solution, takes time and so does not provide the urgent response we need to the serious affordability crisis we are facing.
The Bristol Fair Renting Campaign are highlighting how the cost of renting crisis “has a high human cost” – photo: Bristol Fair Renting Campaign
The Bristol Fair Renting Campaign, joined by campaigners Generation Rent and more than ten other organisations – is calling on local politicians to stand up for renters. We want them to back our demands for new powers to tackle unaffordable rents in Bristol, notably controls on pricing.
Such a policy is common throughout the world, with 15 countries in Europe having some form of control or cap on the price of rent. We even used to have it in England up to 1989, which kept private rents low.
This would quickly have the impact we need to make rents more affordable in our city. Research by Joseph Rowntree Foundation found a cap on rent increases, if introduced now, would be saving the average renting household almost £1,200 per year by 2030.
Energy bills are capped, pensions are protected – so why is rent exempt from regulation? This is also a very popular policy intervention, with research from the Bristol Living Rent Commission finding that 81 per cent of Bristol residents support introducing controls on the cost of rent.
Bristol City Council now has a policy to support and lobby for rent controls, but we need all of Bristol’s MPs and the West of England Mayor to follow suit and demand the government takes action.
We urge our politicians to listen to the overwhelming public support and pledge to support new powers to tackle unaffordable rents in Bristol.
This is an opinion piece from Ruth Day of the Bristol Fair Renting Campaign
Main photo: Betty Woolerton
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